


To be found Wanting

by Paladog_Vyt



Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Gen, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Mind Control, Non-Sexual Submission, Partial Mind Control, Podfic Welcome, References to Addiction, References to Drugs, References to Sex Work, autonomy/agency
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-09
Updated: 2020-05-09
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:00:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24095458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paladog_Vyt/pseuds/Paladog_Vyt
Summary: The Toy Soldier goes through it's non-life wondering about it's own nature, and seeking those like itself. After a few false starts, it finds a special connection in the wilds of Fort Gallfridian, accompanying Pellinore on her quest for the Beast.-A piece written to explore my own nature and feelings towards service and usefullness, if it speaks to someone else, all the better.
Relationships: The Toy Soldier & Pellinore
Comments: 8
Kudos: 53





	To be found Wanting

**Author's Note:**

> Pellinore uses she/her because Reasons. CW's are mostly secondhand, The Toy Soldier itself remains securely in the drug-free platonic corner throughout.

The Toy Soldier never did anything it didn’t want to.

It couldn’t. No matter what it felt or thought about something beforehand, the moment an order was given, it wanted that and that alone more than anything. It was more than a desire of the heart- for it had no heart, or a longing of the soul- for it only pretended to have a soul. It’s entire being shaped itself to the command, the kind of resolve that needed no willpower, no effort to sustain. And when it succeeded- was there joy? Was this satisfaction? Was it anything? How could it know? To ask if it wanted to obey was to ask if an object wanted to have mass- if it were otherwise, it wouldn’t be at all.

It wondered, sometimes, what it would feel like to have a disconnect between desire and deed. It often did things it did not _understand_ \- was that similar at all? Free moments between commands gave it room to experiment—but if it did something it didn’t want to, out of the curiosity of experimentation, was it still not doing what it wanted, just with more intermediary steps? And who was to say what wasn’t an order? When it sang, did it sing for the approval of the audience? Was Jonny’s snapping count of the beat - _a one, a two, a one two three four_ \- an order? It had marched to the beats of many drums. When it was alone, could it be sure that its actions weren’t the relic commands of a forgotten creator? Was there no pride in being a tool? Couldn’t it want to be a good one? Mortals spent their lifetimes trying to find purpose, and the Toy Soldier was nothing _but_ purpose- wasn’t that enough?

What it wanted, when it was alone, was not to be- to find companions. Perhaps it was only natural it would seek others like itself. There had been fellow Toys, in the rich old lady’s home- The Toy Sailor and the Toy Tennis Player and the Toy Gentleman. But they were long scattered God-knows-where, and the Toy Soldier suspected they would have no more answers than it did. The Rose Reds had seemed kindred spirits- it was a soldier after all. And there was a familiarity in the way certain concepts were merely Unthinkable. Rose Reds drank whiskey. Rose Reds did not steal. But ultimately the Rose’s leashes were internal- webs of genetics and circuitry. The Toy Soldier, on the other hand, could do anything- lie and cheat and steal and even fight for the rebels- so long as someone _else_ wanted it to. Options without agency, flexibility without freedom, capacity without control.

The Bittersnipe’s Emporium held no familiar faces- Toy or Rose. Upon joining the Mechanisms, the Soldier found new hope in the metal face of Drumbot Brian, and his switch, always turned by the hands of another. But even the switch went only so far- it could keep Brian from delivering a killing blow, but it couldn’t make him dance upon a table. When he sang or played the drums or made toast, he didn’t have to wonder if the switch had interfered. It shifted the balance of his priorities, but in what his goals were in the first place, Brian still followed his heart- and the Toy Soldier had no heart to follow.

In the City, it hid itself among the automatons of Pasiphae Minos, until she sold it. It had expected this- Toys were meant for picking up and throwing away. It was within the clubs and cabarets of Dionysus that it once again thought it had found others like it- among the nymphs as well as the clientele. The Lotus addicts. It had seen drugs before, there was nothing Jonny d’Ville would not do to his own body. But Jonny was never like this- glassy-eyed and single-minded, fixated upon the drug as if it was the only thing in the world, wanting without reason or limitation, willing to do anything to get it. But of course, _willing_ was the operative word, wasn’t it? In those back rooms, it saw plenty of poor souls striving to overcome the pull of the translucent cubes, refusing it, weaning themselves from its clutches. Struggling, yes, and failing sometimes, yes, but _capable_ of fighting the want at all.

It found more relatable the Somnambulists that others always shied away from. Just as they were willing to laugh at the Toy Soldier’s tumbling and dancing and singing, but never asked it to the private chambers. Even Pasiphae, famous for the debaucheries she inflicted on her creations, had refused to touch it. The living averted their gaze from the walking bodies with their circuit cerebellums, afraid of the reminder that they could be a body without a soul. But the Toy Soldier knew what it was, and recognized its mirror image. The trouble was, the Somnambulists couldn’t see it in kind- couldn’t answer its questions, couldn’t speak to it unless ordered to, and who would give such a command? Did the Somnambulists, like it, have thoughts other than the Acheron, but even less power to express or act upon them? Or did they not even know how to pretend to be alive? With too little autonomy for the ensnared living, too much thought for the sleepwalking dead, the Toy Soldier once again found itself at an impasse, and more alone than ever.

The Toy Soldier accompanied Brian to Fort Galfridian, and the slowly dying town of Camlann. Brian, like many Camlann locals, soon moved instead to the neighboring settlement of Camelot in hopes of something better, but the Toy Soldier was among those that remained. It found itself often helping the townsfolk. It answered the posse members that shouted for someone to fetch them a gun or a motorcycle, without particularly meaning anyone, the “please, God”s and “oh come on”s of exasperated townsfolk said to empty sky. And did intention matter, really? Flour was fetched, motorcycles repaired, odd and ends found- wasn’t that a good thing? Couldn’t it be proud of that? It was happy to be involved in Camlann’s little successes. The beleaguered town had so few. So, when Pellinore stood up on a tavern table and demanded “Go ready me my wheels of speed, my bandoliers, and rifle,” the Toy Soldier obliged, and thereby became a part of what was just and rightful. As they rode out into the desert together, they passed Brian outside of Camelot. Pellinore looked between Brian, hanging at his gallows and shining in the sun, and the Toy Soldier perched in the sidecar. “Is Merlin like you?” she asked. “No.” the Toy Soldier answered cheerfully, because a Proper Soldier was always full of Pep and Vim and Vigor. “I don’t think there’s anyone like me.” 

While the beast eternally eluded them, Pellinore had been raised by her family to be an excellent tracker, and found much in the shifting sands between sparse villages and clustered ghoul camps. There were signs of elaborate irrigation paths, now defunct and leading nowhere. There were scraps- a circuit here, a broken lever there, the tarnished crest of some unknown authority. Sometimes there were ruins- not just the ghost towns of failed villages, but relics whose stripped shells were still larger than any living settlement. In one such vestige of the past, Pellinore even found an ancient advertisement:

W-STE NO RESOUR---

The torn and faded flier proclaimed, a smiling robot face over the arrow between cartoon trash and cartoon treasure. 

GALISANT™ MODEL AUTOMAT-

THE ULTIMATE IN RECYCLING

The forty years they followed the Beast were easier on the Toy Soldier than Pellinore. Rations were sparse, and often the only thing to drink was whiskey- safer in most towns that the water from crumbling wells. But it needed only to pretend to eat and drink anyway- from as close to a teacup as it could get, it was still a Proper Gentleman Soldier, after all. It could keep unblinking vigil through the long nights, and while it helped Pellinore defend against ghoul raiding parties, it had nothing to fear from either stolen supplies or devoured flesh. As disappointing as it was to have sand in its joints and an increasingly drab uniform, all could be fixed in time with a new coat of polish, while Pellinore’s eventual gray hairs and wrinkles would linger.

There were light times- there were other gunners after the roaring, clanking, thieving Beast, and some made themselves companions instead of rivals. Several of the hangers-on were far more interested in the strapping knight than the monster itself. Lucky for them, Pellinore was the amorous sort. Between the more romantic tagalongs and some special nights in local inns, across the years she had about half a dozen children, to about as many parents, scattered across as many towns. By nature of their quest, these ties couldn’t last- there was always the next village to travel to, the Beast to pursue. And the companions that traveled with them inevitably thinned out- to injury and death as often as simple boredom or new priorities. It always came back down to Pellinore, and her eternal squire, the Toy Soldier. 

The world they traveled was a hard one, and it did not spare them. Pellinore was speared in a battle, and for both her and the Soldier’s best efforts at field medicine, would carry the wound for the rest of her life. Once, in the town of Orkney, she accidentally killed the Sheriff, Lot. A mob of guns and pitchforks drove them out of Orkney, and Pellinore’s own devastating guilt nearly drove her back to Camlann. Every time the strain of their quest reached a breaking point, Pellinore and the Toy Soldier would have the same conversation, with only the exact details shifting like the desert sand.

“I don’t know how to go on,”

“Codswallop! You just put one foot in front of the other, what-what!”

“I’m serious. It’s been decades. I’m getting older, Tor, Percival… they’re probably all grown up themselves. And what do I have to show for all my time in this blasted desert? If I turn back now I’ll at least be able to retire in civilization. Maybe do some good for someone before I go.”

“If that’s how you feel old chap, then I’ll send you off and wish you luck! But I’m marching on.”

“Why?”

“Well, when we set out on this quest, Sir Pellinore, you said ‘No turning back until we’ve found the beast’. So that’s what I’m going to do.”

“…You’re right. I can’t retreat in shame now. This _is_ the good I’m doing before I go.”

Each time, Pellinore mistook simple facts for motivation, and the Toy Soldier did not correct her. After all, it could not be said that it didn’t _want_ to be hunting down the Beast. In the two score years they travelled together, there was one conversation in particular that stuck with the Toy Soldier for centuries to come.

“What kind of beast do you think it is?” Pellinore had asked, looking at a rare find: a footprint. All sightings of the Beast agreed upon its enormous size, but its footprints were small and delicate. “I mean, it doesn’t seem like any animal I’ve ever heard of. And in all this time we’ve never come across burrows, or signs of meals, or droppings…”

“Perhaps it’s mechanical. Wouldn’t that be spiffing?”

“Not the word I’d use, but yes, I was thinking the same thing. But, I mean, if you believe all the stories are about the same beast… this thing is three hundred years old, if not more. Something from the Old Days.” Pellinore sat, leaning her back against the wall and pulling out a hand-rolled cigarette for a rest. “Now, people tell a lot of tall tales about the Old Days. I don’t believe a lot of it; I mean, things always look prettier from far away. People make it out to be a paradise- no hunger, no violence, mechanical servants to wait on you hand and foot.”  
The Toy Soldier elected not to point out Pellinore was talking to her own mechanical attendant at the moment.

“But clearly, there was something greater, before. Lots of people overlook them, but you can’t walk ten miles without finding the signs- relics and ruins and suchlike. And clearly, this world is falling apart. Sun seems to get hotter every year. Water’s drying up. Camlann was dying when we left it, it might be entirely gone now. I guess I wanted to fight that, you know?” Pellinore blew a cloud of smoke into the dusty air. “Any thug can hop on a motorcycle and point a gun. I wanted to make things better for folks. Like a real knight, a big fairytale hero. And I guess I could have aimed to be a Sheriff, or gone off to fight ghouls…but the Beast made me so angry. The bounty is a wonder, but that’s not why I’m doing this. All my life I’ve watched people barely getting by- living off of scraps, no time or energy for anything but getting to the next day, just trying to cling to life in a world that’s crumbling around them. And this Beast comes in, and breaks everything just a little more. Destroys what little creation there is. I couldn’t stand it.”

Pellinore took another puff of smoke, contemplating. After a lull, she broke the silence again, saying “You make a good hero too, y’know. You’ve got more spirit than anyone I’ve ever known.”

“Oh…is spirit different from soul?” The Toy Soldier asked. It was pretty sure it lacked the latter.

“I think so, right? That’s in the Bible somewhere- _spirit and soul and body_. Now, I’m no preacher, so maybe I’m wrong. But the way I see it, soul is how you know right from wrong, isn’t it? Your moral compass. It’s what soaks in all your vices and virtues, it gets stained by your sins. Your soul’s what you get judged by, come the End.”

As far as the Toy Soldier was concerned, this all made sense so far- soul was like heart, the key difference between itself and Drumbot Brian. It certainly didn’t have a ‘moral compass’.

“Spirit, on the other hand…” Pellinore continued, “Spirit is what keeps you going. Soul might point you to an idea, but spirit turns it into action. It’s the thing that keeps people on their feet for one more step, it’s commitment, it’s drive, it’s _push_.” 

“Vim and vigor!” the Soldier offered cheerfully.

“Sure,” Pellinore chuckled. “And you’ve got a spirit so big it’s like looking at the noonday sky, I can’t believe it. My spirit’s come close to breaking this trip- no, not come close, it’s _broken_. More than once. I’ve lost all capacity to continue, and each time you’ve carried me through. I don’t know how you do it.”

“It’s the only thing I can do” the Toy Soldier replied, knowing it was true.

After so many years searching, finding the Beast’s lair on a May night was a revelation.

“Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” Pellinore asked, in the hushed awe reserved for churches.

“I’m absolutely gobsmacked.” The Toy Soldier agreed.

The bower was wondrous. One could barely recognize the bits and pieces that it was made from- rust red bricks here, a fragment of a general store sign there, a coil of wire. They had been transformed utterly. The walls curved in intricate patterns, stone and metal were sculpted soft as skin, glass fragments caught the light and streaked the whole scene with color.

They retreated to an outcropping a safer distance away, and Pellinore set up her long-distance rifle, though the Toy Soldier noticed her hands were shaking slightly. They watched as the beast returned, dragging with it a corrugated sheet of steel. It was, as they had guessed, metallic. For the first time, they were able to see it firsthand, in detail- its head swiveled on a long, flexible neck. Its body was spotted, a mix of technological signs and symbols from its bygone creators, and the dust and stains of this world. Its legs seemed too thin for its body, but soon those delicate limbs proved their precision, shaping the steel into its bower with the grace of a lacemaker.

Pellinore sighted through her scope and fired, but the bullet sank into the ground far from the beast. “Come on. This is what you came here for. That sheet could have been part of someone’s roof.” Pellinore scolded herself under her breath. The Toy Soldier watched as she gritted her teeth and set her jaw, the way she did when trying to walk against the strong wind of a sandstorm. Pellinore fired again, and again missed by a country mile. “Can’t aim right from this distance, too much dust and sand in the way,” she muttered, putting the gun away. The Toy Soldier pretended to believe her. “I’ll try tomorrow morning,” Pellinore insisted. “It will probably be asleep. I’ll get close and kill it more directly. Or maybe there’s an off switch or something.”

Which left them with hours left in the night with nothing to do but watch the Beast as it built its bower. It was hard not to get mesmerized by the process, but for the Toy Soldier, there was more to it than beauty. It was struck with a potency of emotion it hadn’t felt since it first met the angel who’s voice it had stolen. Back then, it had first understood the word _love_. Now, it was struck for the first time with the true meaning of _kinship_ , by which all of its prior searches for those like itself paled in comparison. This was not the family resemblance of the Rose Reds, or the metaphorical or philosophical similarity of the Lotus addicts and the Somnambulists. The Beast was, to borrow Pellinore’s terms, a creature of pure spirit. Its form was its function and its fate. It was only following its instructions. And yet- no one had commanded it to make art. No one had ordered it to build beauty. Within the lines and bounds of its own nature, it had created something transcendent.

When morning came, Pellinore did not budge to fulfill her quest. She stared at the enormous automaton, and her weapons, back and forth, again and again, and did not move.

“I can’t do it,” she finally said softly.

“Has your spirit broken again?”

“No, this time I think the weight is in my soul, friend. My heart. I… I came here to kill a beast that was tearing things down, destroying, ruining. Something that was contributing to the entropy of this world. But that… it’s _creating_. No malice, just its own expression of truth. I’m sorry for the loss to the towns, I am, but it’s not hurting people. And I can’t say that a couple of bricks and a sleepless night isn’t worth _that_ ” Pellinore gestured to the bower before them. “It’s filling this dying, barren landscape with beauty. If I stand in the way of that, I’m the one making things worse.”

Seemingly having decided by speaking aloud, Pellinore stood, and began packing her things. “So, I guess I’ll be turning back empty handed” she sighed.

“My hands are usually full of instruments.” The Toy Soldier offered brightly.

Pellinore smiled at it. “Expressing our own truth, eh? Not a bad idea.” 

As the Toy Soldier walked, it kept in its thoughts the questing beast, and began to hum, delighting in the beauty of its own making.


End file.
